


you gave me hyacinths

by thecaryatid



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Additional Warnings in Chapter Notes, Angst, Gen, Grief, Hurt No Comfort, POV Linhardt von Hevring, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), bittersweet ending at best, caspar is dead, magical burnout, no happy ending, past linhardt/caspar, unrecuited linhardt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:41:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22621186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecaryatid/pseuds/thecaryatid
Summary: Caspar dies when Faerghus takes Fort Merceus. Linhardt survives.Failure, grief, and what comes next.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 41





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happy story. Byleth joined the Blue Lions, Faerghus wins, and most of the Black Eagles die. Linhardt survives. 
> 
> Content warnings for the first chapter: Caspar's immediate death, graphic descriptions of violence, self-harm, attempted suicide, and magical burnout. I think that's everything; let me know if you spot something else that should be tagged. 
> 
> I'm thrilled if you read this thing, but please take care of yourself.

Linhardt saw the moment Caspar fell in Fort Merceus, because as always he was as close to Caspar as their battle strategy would allow. Edelgard, stubborn as she was, long ago realized that Linhardt cared more about ensuring Caspar’s safety than about working toward their victory. She indulges him when she can, more for her own benefit than for his. 

It’s Linhardt’s fault, unless it’s Caspar’s fault, and although he never agreed with that old adage of not speaking ill of the dead he feels inclined to make an exception for his partner and best friend. Not _former_ partner - Caspar, as far as he is concerned, will always be his partner and best friend regardless of what the rest of his life might bring. 

Caspar is careless about his own safety, always trusting Linhardt to be ready with a healing spell and a steady hand. And Linhardt is careless because there’s little use for a slow, fragile healer to even attempt fighting. Much more efficient to stay back and let Caspar dive in, save the day and soak up all the glory. 

Except today a Faerghus soldier levels a lance at Linhardt, Caspar steps in to intervene, misjudges, cripples the soldier but takes a stab wound that goes right through a lung - Linhardt can tell, after these years soaking his hands in blood, what damage was done just by the depth and angle of a weapon. It’s a valuable skill. He’s a valuable healer. This wound is terrible and painful and will cause Caspar’s death in a mere minute, but blood is no longer enough to send Linhardt into numb panic. 

Healing is about more than waving your hands and casting physic. It involves prioritizing. So first Linhardt finishes off the soldier with a careful cast of wind, turning a badly-wounded but potentially threatening enemy into so much inert flesh and blood. 

That done he turns to Caspar, light already spilling from his hands to rearrange splintered internal organs and staunch bleeding. Caspar gasps out a grimaced _thanks_ as he always does, regardless of his grievous wounds, regardless that Linhardt has not even healed him yet. He is an optimistic fool; it’s one of Linhardt’s favorite things about him, even as it’s a constant source of concern. 

He doesn’t realize why the pool of blood keeps spreading at first. Linhardt’s speaking the correct words, long since committed to memory until they’re nothing more than a constant chant in every battle. He’s summoning the correct glyphs; no matter how complex the healing spell, the glyphs stay the same for this sort of work. All the additional effort is in the mind, in knowing just how and where to let the light flow in Caspar’s veins. Yet the light is not appearing, Caspar’s breathing is not easing, the blood is spreading. And the magic fades from Linhardt’s fingertips. 

The cause is obvious after a moment; a distant enemy mage with the bright idea to silence the healer, staring intently in Linhardt’s direction and chanting, keeping him from reconstructing Caspar’s lung. On the ground Caspar’s gasping becomes ever more labored, now whistling in and out with a pained wheeze as he stares up. Caspar cannot see the enemy mage; Caspar does not know why he hasn’t been healed. 

Linhardt kneels, for once careless of the blood. “Caspar,” he says urgently, cupping Caspar’s blood-smeared cheek with a pale hand. “I’ve been silenced. Hold on; I can fix this.” Can he fix this? He must, or what is the point?

Caspar chokes out a response even though it’s both foolish and unnecessary. “Okay Lin,” through a mouthful of blood, “I know you can,” air forced through a gaping hole in his chest. It’s astounding he can speak at all; once this is over Linhardt should perhaps do more research into the wonders of the human respiratory system. 

But first, how to fix this? The mage is too far away for a physical attack, not that it would do much good. The sword at Linhardt’s side has never seen much use, and he doesn’t even carry a bow. The battalion of healers is off aiding someone else, and the allies within earshot are neither close to the enemy mage nor equipped for long-distance attacks. He shouts anyway. 

“Kill the mage!” He yells, gesturing wildly toward the one who cast the silencing spell. No one who could do anything about it seems to hear. So it’s all on him, then. 

Silences can, in theory, be broken. They can be resisted and dispelled. Although Linhardt has never seen evidence of a mage breaking one from inside there is, in the abstract, no reason for it to be impossible. 

He can be the first to prove its potential. He’s saving Caspar and also conducting an important magical proof-of-concept. Yes. That is the attitude that can see him through this, prevent the air from escaping Caspar’s lungs for good. 

Linhardt does not call on any particular spell. He raises his hands, focuses all of his prodigious attention on the magic just out of his reach and the imperceptible force preventing him from reaching it. Linhardt bears down. 

Logically, there’s no reason that pressing up against a silence spell should strain the mind any more than channeling the precise, space-folding power of a warp, or the raw force of a windstorm. It’s just another application of the same energy. And yet. 

The silence isn’t a wall. He isn’t sure what it is, but his focus pressing against it starts to break as the wall begins to shatter. As far as Linhardt knows no one has done research on exactly what silence does and how it works; it tends to be a fairly instinctive spell, cast out of desperation and only rarely learned to be cast on command. Who would research it? Most mages become uncomfortable even at the idea of a silence. No mage is willing to _purposely_ subject themself to it just to better define its effects.

Linhardt always strove to avoid that sort of discomfort. But now the structures of his soul, built up over the years to hold and channel power, are caving while the silence splinters and he _doesn’t know which will fail first_. 

Burnout is unpleasant. It happens to healers and battlemages alike, in different ways. Normally the more offensively-skilled mages have no problem channeling and channeling until their synapses are frayed and the marks are beginning to show on their hands, snake through their veins. They only collapse later, once the adrenaline has faded. Healers are different beasts. Their work - Linhardt’s work - is a slow labor of painstaking focus, fueled by careful concentration rather than quick desperation. They feel burnout as it happens, as the slowly scorching power burns through their thoughts inch by inch. It’s a sign any healer learns to take seriously, lest they spend a month feeling as though their mind has been dipped in acid every time they even think to reach for a spell. Linhardt burned out once, as a child, and never again - it was far too uncomfortable and inconvenient for him to contemplate. 

Except right now, where the alternative might be Caspar’s last breath. Even burned out he may be able to cast enough of a spell to save him. It will come at great personal cost, with pain and a long period where he can’t cast at all. The alternative is worse. 

Linhardt coaxes the magic in his blood to a boil until it feels like his flesh is overheated, breaks down all the careful paths for regulating healing spells into one enormous canal, reshapes his mind into a weapon. 

No silence can stand against such an onslaught. It caves all at once, the mage across the fortress collapsing with the agonizing backlash. Magic floods out, illuminating Linhardt before he can control it, ripping through him. And then the worst happens. 

Caspar breathes still, although it’s getting louder and weaker with every second. Linhardt can’t begin to guess how long he struggled - time seems to warp in the midst of a great work, and there’s no greater work than breaking an enemy’s spell. 

But it’s too late and Linhardt was too careless. The silence broke in time, but he’s a magicless husk now, a shell of a thing rotted from within by forces one person was never meant to contain. 

He kneels by Caspar anyway, clutches both of his hands in desperation and coarsely reaches out for the part of himself he always trusted to turn magic into healing. It isn’t there. Or it’s there, but it’s as warped and misshapen as Caspar’s collapsing lung, an apple with a rotten core that caves in as soon as it’s poked, a fortress that’s failed just when it’s needed most. 

“Caspar. Caspar! I’ll find you help, but please hold on.” It’s probably a lie, but Linhardt would do anything to turn it into truth. 

Caspar coughs in one more painful-sounding breath, deeper than the others, rattling like his chest is filled with loose bones clacking together. And, well, it is. 

“It’s okay, Lin,” Caspar chokes out. “You’ll be okay.” And he dies, quite unceremoniously, leaving Linhardt alone in the chaos of a losing battle. 

Death, Linhardt observed through years of reluctant healing, is not dramatic. There is no moment when a soul departs, no single instant when the light leaves the eyes, no hard line between a person and an empty corpse. Caspar’s death is no different. There’s a breath and a breath and then the quiet space where a breath should be. 

There’s the thing that used to be Caspar, silent on the battlefield with its eyes and mouth and chest wound all gaping wide. There’s Linhardt, magicless and Caspar-less, ignoring distant screams for aid, ignoring the arrow that glances off stone right by his hand. 

None of that is important. “We all do desperate things when we must, even me,” Linhardt mutters to the corpse as he slowly, painfully drags it behind a wall and arranges a few forgotten crates to obscure the entrance. No one pays him much mind. The little alcove will suit his purposes; it has a floor wide and even enough to hold a few magic sigils, and enough cover to protect him from stray arrows and hopefully from discovery. 

Blood is, in Linhardt’s opinion, an _inconvenience_. What a messy, inefficient way to keep a body alive and supplied with oxygen; so unpleasantly viscous, so easy to lose too much of if the skin should be torn like a worn-out wineskin. And, of course, there’s his general aversion to the stuff - a silly, useless aversion for a healer with the bad luck to live through a war. 

But at least blood is easy to paint with. 

No magic, not even a spell of basic healing, is available to Linhardt. But blood can’t be silenced and his contains a Crest made only for healing. 

Convenient how his knowledge of anatomy makes him perfectly prepared to take his useless sword and slice into the base of his palm where it’s unlikely to do lasting damage, viewing it as though it belongs to a corpse, shaking more from the sight of blood than from pain. He lets it spill into a pool, mingling with the blood still spilling sluggishly from Caspar’s shattered chest. All the better. And once there’s enough - he makes a second, reckless cut down the side of his forearm where it won’t sever too many veins, to speed it along - he draws the shapes of his spells.

Glyphs for the most powerful healing spells he can think of: fortify, mend, restore. Glyphs for numbing; glyphs for wakefulness; his bloody hands perfectly steady from the years of practice casting through his own revulsion. Linhardt finishes it all with a glyph of Cethleann, wrapping up the lesser spells with a blessing he both carries in him always and is powerless to invoke. It will have to be enough; Caspar grows colder by the second. 

Blood magic is frowned upon, even in the Empire, whatever Hubert does in his shadowed corners notwithstanding. But it’s a simple enough principle, and Linhardt’s even tried it himself on occasion. Nothing major, just small spells, just to see if he could. 

This is not a small spell, but the principles are no more complicated. With one final glyph Linhardt links himself to Caspar, and with a final breath, with a final “I’m sorry, Caspar,” he opens the conduit between himself and the tangled mass of spells painted on the stone. 

The sensation is significantly worse than just opening a vein. Blood is repulsive but simple. You feel the pain of the cut, but not the subsequent effect of blood trickling out of the body. Life is different; there are no blessedly nerveless veins inside one’s mind and soul, no defense mechanisms to ward against pure vitality being ripped from one’s marrow. Nature and the creator did not foresee a future where that sort of defense would be necessary, where that sort of attack would become commonplace. They certainly didn’t foresee Linhardt offering up a life for a life. 

Linhardt drains. It’s the only word for it. Caspar remains unchanged, eyes still unseeing and skin pallid and cold. Linhardt drains. 

The goddess did not build safeguards against this sort of thing, and Linhardt built no safeguards into his blood-scrawled spells. It’s a final, desperate sacrifice into the void. The spells will break when Caspar wakes up or when Linhardt is empty of life. It will probably be the second one: death cannot be reversed, customarily. 

Life runs out to its last drops, trickling more slowly as the pool shallows. Fascinating how the world doesn’t fade so much as sever. Linhardt’s vision remains clear and sensation remains strong, and his thoughts do not stutter. There’s merely the awareness that he doesn’t belong here anymore. Linhardt is a visitor to life whose time is up. 

He spent an unwilling lifetime serving as the barrier between body and death for hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. It must add up to quite a debt owed to death, if there’s anyone who would care or keep track. Hopefully there isn't. And, if there is, hopefully Linhardt’s own blood balances the ledger. 

“It’s alright, Caspar,” Linhardt gasps out as his final connection to the world begins to part. He failed, but at least he won’t have to cope with a Caspar-less life. 

Except then there is shouting, and the breaking of the conduit, and life is being poured back into Linhardt unwilling and all. The refilling of his soul scalds far worse than its emptying ever did. It’s wrong; it’s impossible, except Hubert is glaring down and saying something in a panic, casting a series of muttered spells that sound like three invocations mixed together. Careless of him. 

“Leave me be,” Linhardt says. It comes out as a whisper, or perhaps not at all. Hard to tell now. And with no magic left there’s little he can do. Even his pointless sword has fallen too far away for him to grab. 

A final spell sends him into senselessness, a sleep he recognizes despairingly as unconsciousness rather than death. He hopes for nothing. 

* * *

Linhardt wakes up in the infirmary he spent much of the last few years in, mending the wounds of endless soldiers. His physical hurts are healed. The mobility in his previously-cut hand remains perfect. 

But he can tell without trying to cast that the burnout lingers. The eternal flow of magic remains departed from his mind. And he doesn’t need to cast or look to tell that Caspar isn’t there, or anywhere. The remains of the blood spell linking them echo ceaselessly without an answer from Caspar’s heart. He’s dead, then. And Linhardt isn’t. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You made it! This fic is going to get slightly less depressing. Linhardt's going to process some grief and find some amount of meaning in life. But Caspar will still be dead, so I wouldn't call that a happy ending. 
> 
> Technically this is the same universe as "the same place where you left me standing" but they're largely irrelevant to each other. It's just a fun bit of trivia. 
> 
> Find me [@thecaryatid](https://twitter.com/thecaryatid) if you want to blame me for making Linhardt miserable.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: grief, graverobbing, non-graphic descriptions of a rotting corpse, decapitation, and flesh-eating beetles. 
> 
> Take care of yourself, and let me know if you think anything should be added to that list.

Physically nothing is wrong with Linhardt. He spent a week in deep sleep, ostensibly magic-induced but, in his professional opinion, mostly a very mundane coma. Caspar was not only dead but also buried when he woke up. 

In all likelihood Linhardt would have skipped the funeral anyway, but having the option of attending would have been nice. Caspar never set much store by that sort of thing, and Linhardt has never seen the point. His own grief always proved quite separate from burials and eulogies. 

This time is different in degree but not in the basic mechanisms. There’s the dull pain, the lack of motivation and then by turns the feverish activity of a mind desperate for distraction. The aimlessness he felt after Bernadetta burned on her sniper’s post, the curtained world he felt after Ferdinand fell to the Sword of the Creator, the shaken and undirected fear he’d felt at Edelgard’s expression when she realized the depth of her favorite professor’s resistance. And now Caspar. 

Before there was always the promise of a world where grief had faded and every step didn't’ send him reeling with renewed realization. He could always push it away and then examine it at leisure, let it flow through him in waves until it broke itself on the quiet edges of his mind. 

It’s difficult to conceptualize the grief of Caspar wearing itself out. It certainly can’t be ignored as Linhardt stays in their shared room, strewn with evidence of Caspar’s years alive, not least of which is the large bed Linhardt now occupies alone. The vases of flowers they always brought each other are wilted, petals scattering the floor. There will be no more gifts of lilacs and hyacinths.

It doesn’t help that Linhardt can’t cast, of course. His favorite distraction, gone. 

So few of them are left. Edelgard and Hubert, ever at the head of their army. Dorothea, who frets and sings to herself when she thinks no one observes, who grows more melancholy with every passing hour. Petra — but no, Petra fled a month ago, recognizing the futility of their battle. Edelgard let her go — she always had an uncharacteristic soft spot for Petra. He and Caspar should have followed. Caspar was always filled with pointless loyalty and wanted so badly to be a hero, but he would have followed had Linhardt just left. But Linhardt, for all his relentless practicality, wanted nothing more than to indulge Caspar’s whims. 

Edelgard and Hubert and Dorothea, soldiers to the end. And Linhardt, who remains a husk both in usefulness and in truth. 

* * *

Linhardt and Caspar began dating — although that seemed a poor word for it — after years of complacency, during which Linhardt assumed it was obvious both that he was in love with Caspar and that Caspar was uninterested in that sort of thing, since he’d never made any mention of crushes or love in all their years as friends. They both turned out to be fools in the exact same way, because Caspar had assumed the same thing about Linhardt. And Linhardt was always relatively satisfied with the situation and comfortable in his complacence, but Caspar was not. 

It was after Edelgard’s revolution that Caspar finally said something. Of course it was Caspar, not Linhardt — Linhardt had thoroughly convinced himself he was happy in his quiet research, content so long as he stayed as far from the fighting as possible and was graced with Caspar’s trust. So it was a surprise — a shock, really, a rare completely unanticipated event in a life spent analyzing and waiting — when Caspar turned up at his door one otherwise unremarkable day and handed Linhardt a bouquet of flowers. 

Linhardt inspected them. Blue ones he didn’t recognize, gentle bell-shapes made up of smaller blossoms, bright and intoxicatingly sweet-smelling. White chrysanthemums, more unfamiliar ones like little fire-bright clusters of petals and fragrance. Lilacs and daisies. No ribbon around the bottom, no note, nothing to indicate what they were for or why they were being given to Linhardt, of all people. 

“It isn’t a holiday, is it? I was sure the next feast wasn’t for weeks.”

Caspar stuttered out a response. “They’re not for any holiday, Lin.” 

Not for a holiday. It wasn’t Linhardt’s own birthday, or Caspar’s. There was nothing exceptional about today, at all, except that Caspar showed up oddly bashful and handed Linhardt a bouquet. The flowers and the date revealed no secrets, so Linhardt studied Caspar instead. 

He must be used to being the subject of Linhardt’s attention, so Caspar’s flush was probably not due to that. He was twitchy and jittery, opening his mouth as if to talk and then saying nothing, meeting Linhardt’s eyes and then looking away. Linhardt formed a hypothesis. A series of hypotheses, in order of most to least likely, ranging from _Caspar had taken up gardening_ to _Caspar meant this as a romantic overture_. And past a certain point there was no use in mulling over hypotheses, was there? Particularly when Caspar could confirm or deny any of them, since he was still standing right there, shuffling his feet like he did constantly as a child and had very consciously tried to stop over the last handful of years. 

“Caspar, would you mind telling me what these are for? I would appreciate precision.” 

It didn’t appear that Caspar knew what to say. He looked like a startled deer, wide-eyed and cornered. “So you can’t tell?” Caspar said, like a handful of flowers should have provided Linhardt with some kind of certainty. 

“They are very nice flowers,” Linhardt said encouragingly. There was the outside possibility that Caspar did mean this as a romantic gesture. But there was the much more likely possibility that Caspar thought Linhardt would enjoy some flowers to brighten up his study. No reason to conflate thoughtfulness with romance. 

Linhardt hadn’t been afraid of driving Caspar away for many years. Yes, he was aware that he was odd. Linhardt spent too much time buried in books, found himself fixated on the esoteric or flitting from subject to subject by turns, didn't even wake and sleep with the rest of the world. He was off-putting with his sharp, wry humor, and apparently downright worrying in his habit of watching the world as though he could understand it in its entirety if only he examined it from enough angles. People tolerated Linhardt; they coveted his intellect and wished they could direct it toward their own means; they despaired at his fragmented focus; they found his distaste for physicality and disconnect with the standard rhythms of day and night too irritating to say. People, in general, did not like Linhardt. 

But then there was Caspar, who seemed to view all of that as particularly interesting features of Linhardt’s company rather than quirks to be ignored or fixed. And now there was Caspar, staring at the bouquet he handed Linhardt as though there was some great meaning hidden in the color of the petals and shapes of the leaves. 

Was there a meaning hidden in it? Linhardt had heard that some flowers were assigned meanings of love and hate and everything in between, but it wasn’t an area he’d read extensively in. Did Caspar think that Linhardt would take one glance at the bundle of flowers and immediately unravel all its secrets? Well, that would make it something more akin to a letter than a simple bouquet. It would explain Caspar’s sudden loss of words. 

“Caspar,” Linhardt said, careful and measured, “did you mean to include a letter with this gift? You are looking at me as though its meaning should be obvious.” 

“No. Noooo, no letter,” Caspar said, rushed and flustered. “The meaning is supposed to be obvious, Lin! I thought you knew this stuff!”

“This stuff meaning flower symbolism,” Linhardt clarified. “No, I am afraid I never had much interest in botany. Do share whatever message these are supposed to convey.” 

“Oh, come on! You’ve never read a book on that? It must be the one subject you don’t know anything about. Just great.” Caspar seemed annoyed, yes, but just as annoyed that Linhardt inexplicably didn't know this one esoteric thing than that he hadn’t gotten this specific message. 

“Your faith in the breadth of my knowledge astounds me, but I still do not know what these flowers are meant to say.” There was a great deal of purple and blue, red and white. Romantic colors, now that Linhardt was thinking with that possibility in mind. 

“Oh, come on! Are you really going to make me say it?” 

“Considering that I still don’t know what it is you’re trying to say, yes.” The blue bell-shaped flower clusters were particularly fragrant. Linhardt breathed in deeply; things touted as floral scent generally just annoyed him with both their actual scent and the non-specificity of their names, but this particular flower seemed just what that sort of thing should smell like. Fresh and sweet, a fragrance he’d caught many times carried on the wind over an open field. “What are these ones, by the way?” 

“Do you just not know what flowers look like? Do you know nothing about plants? Haven’t you been friends with Bernadetta for like three years?” 

All technically true; all irrelevant to Linhardt’s question. “Yes, well? I still don’t know what they are.” 

“The blue ones are hyacinths, Lin!”

Hyacinths. Of course. Maybe he did know that, at some point. “And they mean what, exactly?” 

Caspar made a strangled, frustrated grunt, as though Linhardt was being purposely difficult instead of merely precise. “The blue hyacinths mean loyalty and sincerity, okay? And they go with the lilacs, which mean.” He stopped as though the sentence was complete. 

“Which mean…?” 

“Come on, Lin, even you must know what lilacs mean!” 

“Should I? Is flower symbolism common knowledge? I’m sure I’d recall all the flower vendors yelling to the throngs about how thistles mean true love or what have you, were that the case.” 

“You’re really not teasing me,” Caspar says, wide-eyed and pink all down his neck. “Okay. Okay! I can do this. I can do this!” 

“There’s no need to shout, but I suppose do whatever you need. Is there a reason you’re still standing in the hallway?” It wasn't like Caspar to be so hesitant about pushing his way into Linhardt’s room. 

“Right, right. I’m just nervous, okay? You’re theoretically aware of nervousness.” He did push past Linhardt now, hesitating before flopping down on the edge of the bed. There were several perfectly good chairs, but Caspar always seemed to ignore them. 

“Of course,” Linhardt said distractedly. He didn’t have a vase. The flowers did not come with a vase. He continued holding them. 

“I can do this,” Caspar said, staring very determinedly at an empty spot about a foot in front of him. “Okay. So, Lilacs. They mean first love, okay? And I gave them to you because that’s you, Linhardt. You’re my first love.”

How simple. How very Caspar, making a confession using a deed rather than words, blindly assuming that Linhardt already had the exact knowledge needed to infer its meaning. How touching, the careful arrangement of flowers. The other ones, the daisies and chrysanthemums, must have similar meanings. He should go find a book on the subject, after this. Perhaps make Caspar an answering bouquet and watch him decipher the messages hidden in every petal. But first a more immediate response was called for, before Caspar combusted entirely and melted away. 

“Ah. I never thought you would… well, it doesn’t matter what I thought, as I was so demonstrably wrong. May I kiss you?” 

“What? You mean that’s. That’s a yes?” Caspar didn’t wait for another answer before pulling Linhardt down by his fine collar and pressing their lips together, awkward and clumsy, hesitating like he knew only the theory of kissing. Linhardt took over as a mercy, although he’d very much have liked to follow all of Caspar’s clumsy attempts as they progressed more organically. But Caspar’s comfort came first, he supposed. 

Not that Linhardt was terribly experienced, but a few quick forays into the worlds of sex and romance in the name of curiosity served him well enough as a guide for what Caspar was likely to enjoy, moving his lips in careful rhythm, gently prompting Caspar’s mouth to open with little licks of his tongue. He’d never really understood the fuss but Caspar seemed to like it, gasping loud at the softness of Linhardt’s tongue.

“In the interest of clarity,” Linhardt said as he pulled back and admired Caspar’s blush and widened eyes, hands still hooked into the neck of Linhardt’s robes, “that was a yes. I feel quite the same, Caspar.”

“You do? Why didn’t you ever say something?!”

“I suppose the timing never seemed right,” Linhardt said. 

And that was that. 

* * *

The grave is at the outskirts of their encampment, next to the others. No one has left flowers. There’s a happy little group of Edelgard’s friends, the ones she cared about enough to bury separately and say a few words for. The common soldiers remain piled into mass graves, despite all her talk of equalizing the commoners and nobility. 

The hypocrisy is useful at the moment, since Linhardt won’t have to dig through days of rotted flesh to find Caspar’s body. The grave is not marked, but it is the freshest of the ones favored with their own little plots of land. It will be all the easier to unearth Caspar. 

Or, well, the body Caspar once inhabited from the grave in which it rests. The dead cannot own things, and yet people insist on using their names in the possessive — Caspar’s grave, Caspar’s armor, Caspar’s cat. Caspar is no longer around to have things. Functionally, they all belong to Linhardt now. So really he stands above Linhardt’s grave, currently inhabited by a body that once belonged to Caspar. 

Manual labor is not his strength, but it’s hardly the first grave Linhardt’s robbed. The ground is loose and damp, the body isn’t buried quite as deep as it should be, there’s no real coffin, and Caspar’s hair — the bright blue hair that once belonged to Caspar — peaks out before long. 

Linhardt studies it. Flesh begins to rot so quickly in the soil. Caspar always hated being cooped up in any space, let alone such a small, cramped thing. Linhardt can’t decide whether the lack of a coffin makes it better or or worse — less claustrophobic, perhaps, but with no barrier between him and all the crawling things of the earth. In all likelihood maggots have already started feasting on the soft innards of Caspar’s eyes. It’s a shame; Caspar had such nice eyes. 

Well, they’re doing no good in the ground. But a corpse is an unwieldy, heavy thing, and Linhardt has little use for an entire one. He just wants something of Caspar to keep, regardless of the stares he’ll no doubt get, horrified and just one side of scared, from those around him. Linhardt tries to imagine Caspar’s opinion of such a thought: it resolves so easily, as though Caspar lives in fact instead of just in Linhardt’s mind. A disgusted snort, half repulsed and half amused, an incredulous stare that turns into a shrug and a smile. Hey, if it makes you feel better, Lin! I’m not using it. 

Caspar was so willing to tolerate all of Linhardt’s stranger ideas, grinning and gold, always ready with a laugh and a kind, clumsy word. 

“You were much too good for me, you know,” Linhardt whispers, a secret between him and nothing. “So much so I’m not sure you ever realized it. Perhaps I should have felt guilty, but I’m far too selfish for that.” 

He brushes the dirt away from Caspar’s — the head that was Caspar’s. It isn’t his first graverobbing expedition. It won’t be his last. There’s a long, serrated knife he carries in his belt on this sort of trip. 

“Even in death I’d hate to lose sight of you,” he says matter-of-factly as ever as the sharp, toothed edge slices through desiccated skin and muscle. The blade catches on bone, but it’s sturdy. A few good pulls are all it takes to part the vertebrae from the base of Caspar’s skull. 

It’s funny how corpses hold less fear for Linhardt than the blood of the living. A papercut on someone else is enough to make him wince, but a days-dead body is merely a curiosity. Without breath and pain and blood, the slow decay of flesh that gnaws skulls apart tooth by tooth is one more fact of life. The disembodied head that was once Caspar is just a thing, full of sentiment and memory, but a thing nonetheless. 

“You always told me I was sentimental, deep down,” Linhardt says, cradling the remains of Caspar with one hand resting under the solid jaw and the other pressing into the hair that hasn’t yet parted from the back of the skull. “I suppose you’re right, in an odd way.’ 

Their encampment is a short walk. It’s night, but there are enough people that Linhardt spies a reasonable collection of horrified stares. You’d think they’d be used to it be now — it’s not as though Linhardt is the only mage around with an odd concept of the appropriate. 

“Were you ever not right about me, Caspar?” In everything, the mundane as well as the esoteric, Caspar always knew. He wasn’t put off by the careless wit and disinterested air that drove away so many people. A stubborn, energetic fool, who Linhardt loved more than he’d realized he could love anyone. A fool who got himself trustingly killed. 

“This is where I should say that I wish you’d never met me, if that would mean your survival. Well, I’m afraid I’m too selfish to mean that.” The head remains cradled against his chest as he limps down the stairs to one of Hubert’s more odious rooms. On reflection, Linhardt probably isn’t supposed to know about it. Oh well. “I strongly prefer a life in which I knew and loved you to one where we never met, current sadness aside.” 

Linhardt stares into Caspar’s clouded, congealing eyes for one last, long moment, memorizing the look of his face half-rotten and all. Perhaps he should have a portrait done while his memory of Caspar’s shape is still fresh. “Only bones and flesh now. You have seen me do this before, Caspar. I hope you wouldn’t mind.”

Hubert keeps several cases of beetles around. They’re remarkably efficient at consuming softened flesh. It’s why Linhardt bothered to break in originally; occasionally one needs a femur or something stripped of inconvenient tendons. They’ll do for Caspar’s head as well as any other meat. So he drops it in, quite unceremoniously, and watches the beetles swarm onto Caspar’s unseeing eyes and unmoving tongue. Opportunists first and foremost, going for the softest flesh first. 

The cleaning may take a few hours. Linhardt is both unwilling to leave and too exhausted to stand up straight, so. He sits behind Hubert’s desk. Predictably, he falls asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Linhardt, I'm sorry that your cute flower-language ficlet became a flashback in the angst fic. I'll write a proper adorable Casphardt fic one of these days.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings! Another cameo from the flesh-eating beetles, discussions of death, general morbid content, grief

“Linhardt,” a voice says sometime later, waking him from a dream that was - if not cheerful - at least not about Caspar. 

“Must you loom so?” Linhardt says. He yawns; stifling it seems far too much trouble. “I needed to borrow your beetles.” 

“My beetles,” Hubert repeats menacingly. Must he always lean so hard into the whole horrible dark mage role? Doesn’t it get exhausting? 

“You’re so very adept at repeating things. Yes, your beetles.” 

“And who is the unlucky recipient of their services?” Hubert asks. Or interrogates, possibly. All conversations with Hubert eventually feel like interrogation. 

“Caspar, of course.” Linhardt relishes how even Hubert’s eyes widen at the clarification. “I thought I’d keep his skull, in memory. He certainly never wanted to be left in the ground. This is somewhat better.” 

“You should probably send someone to fill in his grave, by the way,” Linhardt says, taking some satisfaction in cutting him off just as he seems about to regain his wits. 

Hubert doesn’t often look disturbed. Perhaps he doesn’t even look disturbed now, but it’s what Linhardt reads in the slant of his eyebrows and tightening of his mouth. 

“Or don’t,” Linhardt continues in the unexpected silence. Hubert’s usually not one to restrain his responses. How odd. “Leave the rest of him uncovered for the wolves. The worms already got to him; allowing the creatures of the surface to scavenge him hardly makes a difference.” Caspar might even find it a bit amusing, having some wolf make off with a torn-off leg. Caspar never let anything disturb him for long. 

“I see,” Hubert finally says, chipped and brittle. “What an odd way to process grief.” 

Linhardt’s glowing pride nearly reaches his emptied heart. No magic, no Caspar; but at least he’s kept his wit. 

“And will you be requiring any other services for Caspar, or is simply removing the flesh from his bones sufficient?” Hubert asks, finally recovering. 

“Oh, I’m only cleaning his skull,” Linhardt says. The crawling mass of beetles is slowing; they must be almost finished. “The rest of him can stay in the earth.” 

“Well, it’s none of my business, and I hardly care,” Hubert says, reaching an impressive falsehood-to-word ratio, “but why?” 

Honestly. As if Hubert’s quarters weren’t filled with the most macabre trinkets; as though this was different than the charred little knit flower Hubert kept in remembrance of Bernadetta, or the paperfine tea set still seated on his desk, doomed to be forever unused. 

“Caspar’s hardly going to miss his eyes, and I would appreciate something to keep in remembrance. His personal effects are mine now. And you don’t get much more personal than a skull, do you? Keeping it is uncharacteristically sentimental of me, I know; it’s just an object. He doesn’t inhabit it any longer.” 

Hubert’s mouth twitches in some cousin to a sneer. “True enough,” he says, and really, is  _ Hubert  _ biting back words out of some ill-placed pity?

“Don’t soften your thoughts on my account. I imagine I’m as broken as I’ll ever be,” Linhardt says absently. He’ll need some way to transport Caspar’s skull; it wouldn’t do to break it in some clumsy fall. “Do you have any good spells for reinforcement and protection, by the way? I would normally enchant it myself, but I’m afraid I’m still rather useless at magic.” He spreads his hands, empty and open. Burnout lingers.

“Those aren’t my specialty,” Hubert says. “But in light of your… loss… I could attempt a few charms.” 

“Only if you’re confident in your abilities, of course. If you were to break it I would -” Linharrdt sighs. Magicless, ungifted in any physical capacity, left without the brawler who was always at his side. “I don’t know what I would do, but I’m sure it would be suitably disruptive and unpleasant.” 

Hubert’s laugh is as disconcerting as ever, it’s cartoonish villainy an odd constant that never seems to fade. “The emperor and I are allowing lenience in your grief, but make no mistake that we wouldn’t allow any such disturbance.”

“Oh?” For all her ruthlessness, he doubted Edelgard had the stomach to put a dagger in Linhardt’s back. Besides, it would rob her of her future head of research. Or, at least, her potential future head of research. It’s not an appointment that seems so attractive, now. 

Hubert could always take care of things without bothering to inform her, of course. But Linhardt’s potential death feels underwhelming when weighed against his shattered life. “Well, do what you must. I hope you’ll bury me beside Caspar if you elect to kill me.” 

The beetles should have finished their work by now. Linhardt hauls himself out of the chair, wincing at his creaking, underused joints. His vision clouds once he’s standing; he steadies himself weakly against the desk, and then steps over to the tank without checking Hubert’s reaction. Why bother? He’s overstepped or not; he’s dead or not. ”Now, unless you have something more interesting to say, would you stand aside? I need to retrieve my skull.” 

Obligingly, Hubert steps to the side, eyes following each of Linhardt’s too-slow movements. 

He shoos the beetles away from the skull with his sleeve. They generally don’t eat living flesh when there’s dead in good supply, but it never hurts to be careful. “I’ll be taking this. Do enjoy your dark deeds, Hubert.”

“A moment. I suppose I can attempt a few basic enchantments on that.” 

Linhardt considers, gazing down. The skull looks like any other, a generic bone construct made to house brain and life. Not the bright-white of old bones left bleaching in the sun, not the papery discolored yellow of bones stored for years underground, but the damp and dull grey of freshness, the scents of flesh and blood still lingering. It was Caspar’s, and now it’s his, and neither he nor Caspar ever enjoyed Hubert’s spellwork. 

“On second thought, I believe I’ll take care of it myself once my powers return. It’s a simple work, after all, and I’m much more suited to it than you.” Linhardt smiles, wry and almost sincere, at Hubert’s discomfited scowl.

Hubert doesn’t try to stop him as he leaves, sweeping out in his mage robes. A bit of padding will do just as well to transport Caspar as a protective enchantment would, in the short term. He has a soft leather satchel he carries his rarest books in, itself spelled against rot and breaking. It will do nicely for protecting Caspar’s bones, even as he rides away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow okay I lost my angst braincell for six months there! So, a short chapter while I get back into the swing of writing angst and untangle my notes from last February. And maybe edit the first couple chapters again. 
> 
> and im on [twitter](https://twitter.com/thecaryatid) i guess


	4. Chapter 4

Dorothea’s hovering outside his room when he returns, freshly-cleaned skull cradled in both his arms. Her gaze slides down to it and back up to him, halting. 

“Linny. How lovely to see you.” As though it’s a normal day, as though they’re about to take tea and complain about the nobility’s foibles. 

“Dorothea,” Linhardt says, not about to break the illusion. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

And just like any other day, she smiles that practiced smile. “Join me for tea, Linhardt? You’re the least insufferable person around here.” 

“I thought you were over lying to me.” Least insufferable? Him? Preposterou. “But I wouldn’t object to tea.” 

So they get tea. 

Linhardt brings Caspar, perches him in all his fresh-dead glory beside the pastry platter. The pastries probably taste the same as always, flaky and rich, but lingering burnout erases the finer flavors into cloying sweetness. 

“So, Linhardt,” Dorothea doesn’t acknowledge the elephant on the delicate tea table, “I hear you’ve been occupying yourself well.” 

Linhardt shrugs. “I wasn’t aware there was another choice. It’s fill the waking hours or fall back into undirected thought, and that isn’t so pleasant at the moment.” 

“No, it wouldn’t be,” Dorothea agrees. “Why don’t I share all the latest gossip? Have you heard what Lady Abelard wrote to the Emperor?” She clasps her hands on the table. 

“That sounds useless and mind-numbing.” Linhardt takes a bite of cake. It crumbles into sand on his tongue. “Continue.” 

Dorothea’s laughter fills the room, and her chatter takes its place. She’s always perceptive, collecting the latest scandals—who’s cheating, who’s wearing last year’s fashions. 

Linhardt listens. He couldn’t care less about the nobility’s petty squables, but it fills the air. He falls into the rhythm of complaint, cuts in with occasional biting retorts, and says little else. Pointless facts crowd out remembrance: here, the spill of blood on Linhardt’s fingers, replaced by Lord Santon’s horrid polka-dot doublet; here, the scrape of armor on stone, buried by Her Grace Lieven’s out-of-date insistence that her daughter marry well; here, a last rattling exhale, drowned out by the Rysalka set’s frivolous parties. 

It’s peaceful, until Dorothea runs out of words. 

“Well? Nothing to add?” She asks. 

The pastry platter is empty, the teapot is drained, and apparently even Dorothea runs out of conversation eventually. 

“I was thinking,” Linhardt says, worrying at the border of an insufferably fancy doily, “how odd memory is. It’s so changeable and yet impossible to control.” A fragment of Caspar that wasn’t caught in the wave of unimportant facts surfaces; the sheen of blood on sweat-soaked hair. Soon, other memories will ooze back. 

“You’re the one who always told me not to dwell on the past,” Dorothea says. 

“I apologize for my hypocrisy,” Linhardt says, staring into the depths of his teacup. The past ought to have the decency to stay where it belonged. It did not. It followed Linhardt to meals and through conversations and cornered him in dreams.  _ Haunted  _ was a silly, dramatic word for silly, dramatic people, and now Linhardt numbered among the silly, dramatic people it applied to. 

“Oh, Linny.” Dorothea’s smile is sad and kind. “You finally ran out of places to run to.” 

* * *

It’s late afternoon when Linhardt returns to his quarters and sets Caspar gently on the desk, where he has a clear view of the room. 

Metaphorically, Dorothea was correct. All his mindspaces are quite haunted. Physically, though, nothing is keeping him here. Linhardt customarily does not look at his most uncomfortable thoughts. It’s easier to ignore them, or sleep them off, or drown them in research. But they keep creeping back around the corners of distraction, and his sleep’s been fitful for the last few days. 

So, a few unavoidable thoughts. Linhardt sprawls out onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Fact one: there’s no reason to stay. He’s leaving, walking out the front door with Caspar in tow. Waiting out the burnout is foolish—there’s no guarantee his casting will ever return to full strength, and every day he lingers is a day better spent leaving. 

Fact two: possible destinations are limited. The trampled fields that were once Faerghus wound’t welcome an Empire deserter. The Alliance was no better, and of course he couldn’t seek refuge in the Empire. 

Fact three: the Empire was losing the war. Friends were dying or deserting one after another, and even Edelgard’s unshakeable conviction seemed more like a desperate last stand than a quest for change. Soon enough, Enbarr would be overrun. Linhardt’s presence would change nothing; he’d only be another body for the winners to dispose of. 

And, fact four: he’s grudgingly resourceful. Caspar always wanted to travel the world, but he never thought about the details. Linhardt did that for him, and the compilation of likely destinations, forgotten treasures, and abandoned castles and such was intended as a present on the day they finally left. No country would want him, but the world is full of abandoned places suitable for a lone mage. 

There’s one last uncomfortable thought lurking behind the comfort of escape. Fact five: Hubert probably knows Linhardt’s plans. It’s impossible to say in how much detail, but the man’s like an octopus, fishing out information with his beedy eyes and many arms. Would the Empire bother to follow a burned-out healer, even if he is a member of the Emperor’s inner circle? Would Hubert drag him back, lock him up, make him into some sort of example? 

And would Linhardt care? 

Without Caspar’s boisterous presence, his quarter ought to feel less cramped. They do not. They are empty and claustrophobic without Caspar to constantly break the silence. 

“I didn’t realize how accustomed I’d become to noise until you left,” Linhardt says to the skull. “I always thought I preferred quiet. You intruded on my life even more than I noticed.”

The skull stares back, eyeless and emotionless. Speaking to such a poor remnant of Capsar is still somehow comforting. It fills up the space. 

“Will this become a habit? Am I to be an old man wandering some dusty city, muttering to a skull?” Caspar would have laughed at the image. He’d tell Linhardt he wouldn’t notice his conversation partner was dead, as long as they didnt’ interrupt his ramblings about magic. 

“You’d probably tell me to go lay my worries on Edelgard. But, you realize, my worries can’t be put to rest when the worst of them are already true. You have died, I’ve lost that lovely future you dreamed about, and our armies are dwindling. Caspar, what would you do if you’d survived and I had not?”

Predictably, Caspar does not answer. 

Linhardt isn’t brave. He’s spied and stolen, but only when he was sure he wasn’t observed. He’s killed, but only as a last resort. He’s always tried to flee discomfort and avoid difficult decisions. But, finally, all of his usual sanctuaries are gone. 

The world is large. Tiring, exhausting, full of inconvenient places and populated by people who’ve never heard the name Hevring. War has left thousands of empty, abandoned buildings in addition to the more notable landmarks Linhardt has charted in his books; there’s no shortage of places for a broken mage to live. He has plenty of money, and he’s a difficult enough target to discourage most bandits.

Fact six: nothing to be done, then, but leave.

Linhardt’s wardrobe is full of mage robes, but there are a few outfits of more common material. They’ll do as travel gear, hard-wearing and unlikely to stand out. He’ll drop by the kitchens, take a bag of rations. No one will question him; even burnt-out and useless he’s still techincally a general. He’ll pack up the most important notes, select an intersting book or two, and load everything on a horse. 

The magehorse he rides into battle is a fine, well-trained beast. Ferdinand was proud of that horse, both suited to battle and undemanding enough to work under Linhardt’s light hand. She’d be far too noticeable on the road. 

It’s to be a more common horse, then. There are plenty around, since the riders die faster than they can be replaced. Perhaps the bay, the one the quartermaster used to ride while overseeing supply lines. Yes, the bay—well-trained, hardy but docile, modest enough for a former soldier or a struggling merchant. 

His softest leather satchel is hiding in the back of the wardrobe. Linhardt digs it out, places it on the desk next to Caspar, and shuffles around pouches and spare clothes until it’s a well-padded nest for the skull. 

“I suppose we’re traveling the world together after all,” Linhardt says, latching the bag shut. “This isn’t quite how we had planned.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeets another short chapter of my comfort fic into the world
> 
> This is, checks notes, only chapter 4 and my outline's already mostly irrelevant. The fic will probably get wherever it's going eventually.


End file.
